Michael Weiss is the Research Director of The Henry Jackson Society, a foreign policy think tank, as well as the co-chair of its Russia Studies Centre. A native New Yorker, he has written widely on English and Russian literature, American culture, Soviet history and the Middle East. Follow @michaeldweiss

The Palestinian statehood bid is a legal mess that threatens to disenfranchise the Palestinian diaspora

A fascinating article appeared yesterday at Ma’an News Agency on how the Palestinian bid for statehood at the UN may in the end be compromised by its own internal illegalities and contradictions. At issue is the PLO’s claim to be the “sole legitimate representative” of the Palestinian people, a claim which it has held under international law since 1975 and yet which may be ended by the de jure creation of a State of Palestine. This would have a direct effect on the lives of 5-6 million Palestinians worldwide.

A team of independent solicitors led by Guy Goodwin-Gill, a professor of international law at Oxford, has submitted a seven-page document to Palestinian negotiators highlighting two critical problems with the UN gambit. The first is a chicken-or-egg dilemma in that the PLO is umbrella organisation from where the Palestinian Authority – the administrative government that rules the West Bank and (nominally) Gaza – derives its legitimacy. In any future state, the PA and its attendant ministries would be transformed into a permanent government responsible for everything from tax collection to national security to sanitation. However, as Goodwin-Gill’s brief points out, the PA currently has “limited legislative and executive competence, limited territorial jurisdiction, and limited personal jurisdiction over Palestinians not present in the areas for which it has been accorded responsibility.” Constitutionally, the PA can't abolish its parent organisation. Yet the PLO, which effectively controls Palestine’s foreign policy, will become obsolete after September because how do you represent a nationless people who suddenly find themselves in possession of a nation?

Here’s the second hiccup: the PLO doesn’t just represent Gazans and West Bankers and East Jerusalemites but the entire Palestinian diaspora, from Algeria to Jordan. If it is abolished or rendered obsolete, then that diaspora stands to become disenfranchised. Have Arab League countries pushing the statehood bid and hosting on their soil scores of refugees – in some cases, the great-grandchildren of expelled or fugitive inhabitants of Israel from the 1948 and 1967 wars – properly understood that this deal may legally nullify the Right of Return?

Ma’an does not address the fact – one that may irk a few Guardian contributors – that the statehood declaration will formally codify the two-state solution at the UN. The dream of a map with no Israel on it will be become political fairy dust overnight as well as a not-insubstantial campaign issue for Hamas. “Palestine means Palestine in its entirety, and Israel cannot exist in our midst,” Hamas’s foreign minister Mahmoud al-Zahar said in July. “Yeah, yeah" will come the reply after September.

Qatar, which has been one of the loudest proponents of the UN initiative, doesn't seem to have explained the trickier provisos to the terrorists. Since the Assad regime in Syria went wobbly, the emirate’s been hosting Khaled Meshaal, Hamas's Damascus-based chief ideologist, for regular visits. No doubt Meshaal’s scouring the real estate section for a change of scenery. But when the raison d’être of his party becomes a footnote of international law, will he take it out on the Qataris who helped build the state he never wanted?